World of Ashes II (29 page)

1
st
VR ate lunch together, sat through more briefings that put most everyone to sleep, then were assigned their new barracks. These were actually new buildings just off a helicopter airstrip built on the edge of the still functional golf course. (The Air Force brass still had to relieve the stress of losing a war somewhere.) The first level had a newly designed staircase that could rotate the steps on a locking chain like a bicycle and turn a staircase into a slide the undead would just slip off of, making climbing it impossible without serious coordination. Unofficially it was also loads of fun to get shitfaced, tilt the steps and slide down them as part of a blowing/drinking game. As any GI will tell you, what happens in the barracks
is supposed
to
stay in the barracks.

Daniel found a seat next to the Staff Sergeant who didn’t have a tongue and vaguely wondered to himself how the man communicated orders, but then figured he’d find out during training. They were scheduled for a mock battle the next day, trying out new tactics with simmunitions and well-padded actors who would play swarming zombies. For now though, he had just under a hundred adult children who needed time and space to vent. Most of them, as he understood it, had lived in much worse conditions than him while behind the Red Line. The cigar chomping little-woman had been trapped in a bank by a horde of more than two thousand, virtually everyone in her town. She lived off promotional popcorn samples, mints and leftover employee lunches for more than a month. He didn’t know how she’d gotten out, but her story was one of the nicer ones. Others had had to kill people they wouldn’t have under any other circumstance, leave loved ones behind, sacrifice some people to save others. So for now, Daniel would oversee the grown up’s playhouse and let his people play. At least until someone got seriously hurt, then he’d have to be the adult and slink off before someone who outranked him appeared to bring their shit back to order.

For the first week after VR-1’s initial formation, the training had to be light, mostly because nobody knew what the other was capable of. Static targets didn’t interest the men, many of whom couldn’t be convinced to shoot them beyond fifty meters, citing it as a waste of ammo against Vic. Major Sharp had to offer a dozen fresh eggs, a rare wartime commodity, to the first man to hit all of his targets in the head. A quiet teenager who spent more time in a book than caring for his gear, a kid who’d been in Basic Training when his base was overrun, immediately stood and shot all of his targets square in the forehead without so much as pausing for breath. Apparently he hated MRE’s. He ate every egg in front of the others the next morning without changing his deadpan expression even once. The entire ordeal infuriated Sharp, but Daniel could see the humor in it. Sharp wanted a crack unit, but instead was saddled with a bunch of crack-pots. The careerist officer saw only another obstacle to his silver oak leaf, but Daniel felt the potential for the land-based version of Pappy Boyington’s
Black Sheep
all around him
.
He even suggested a black sheep as a mascot to Sharp, but the name was struck down because of pointless concerns over racist overtones. Sharp insisted their mascot be a Fusilier, but not surprisingly nobody knew what that was, let alone how to spell it.

The night before the war games Daniel didn’t sleep, again. It wasn’t that the barracks were noisy, but more that he was simply part of a generation that would never sleep right again. He just lay in his bunk on the third level, staring at the empty racks for the other officers yet to arrive. He secretly hoped the smoking midget wouldn’t try for a billet, mostly because of the smoking. It had been a long time since Daniel really slept, he realized, even in his mother’s house. Not since the first night he was home had he been completely out of it, but that was just because of exhaustion. Deciding to open one of his duffel bags and organize the clutter, he found the shaving kit with his old MOS number embroidered on it, the one every private buys in basic because nobody told you to bring one in the first place. Inside was a bottle of pills he’d pilfered from his mother, she had so many it wasn’t like they were vital. There were enough sleeping pills in there to last him seemingly forever, so he fished one out and drank it with a glass of orange juice in the officer’s refrigerator. An adjoining commons room with a brand new couch sufficed for a place to relax until it set in.

Tonight Daniel thought he’d play some good ol’ fashioned
Grand Theft Auto 5
. Of all the games one could live vicariously through right now, Rock Star Game’s financial juggernaut about criminal activity and stealing cars was a pretty good one. His avatar, which looked as close to reality as possible, had a high-rise apartment, ten cars and four planes and enough money to never want for anything again. So what does Daniel do with this unlimited world of pleasure and crime? Why, pick up hookers and drive them to the middle of nowhere, use their ‘service’, then leave them miles from civilization. There probably wasn’t a good reason why doing this amused Daniel, the hooker would disappear as soon as he left the area so the graphics engine wouldn’t have to render her anymore. Perhaps it was the thought that she would have to walk back to the nearest town in high heels that made him giggle. He used a tandem rotor helicopter to pick cars up and drop them in the ocean, stole fighter jets from the military base and smote what few players were still online, and again picked up more fictional hookers in his fictional world until finally he noticed the real world getting weird around him. He looked, but Lea wasn’t there. He waited longer, just to see if he could provoke either his delusions or the hereafter.

“What do you want, Daniel?” Lea’s ghost asked, looking impatient as if she had somewhere to be or something better to do.

“You.” He admitted, finishing his bottle of juice.

Lea rolled her eyes, “You have to stop this. Beside the fact that one day they’ll either catch you or you’ll be knocked out at the wrong time and be eaten alive, it’s just not healthy for you to keep conjuring me. Let me be dead, Daniel.”

“I can’t.” He admitted, setting his controller down. The car he was driving on the game hit a rock and ramped off of it in a spectacular cartwheel that ended in a river, but he wasn’t watching. “I’ve got no one else.”

Lea’s hand reached out, her intangible flesh teasing that she could ever touch him again. “Then find someone, Daniel. Find something to be good at and a woman to give you hundreds of fat children.” He imagined he could hug Lea one last time, but the drugs weren’t that good. This really was goodbye.

“I love you, Lea.”

He said, blinking once and waking up in the hallway of the bathroom wearing half of his dress uniform. His alarm clock was one of those demented inventions that rolls off the nightstand so you have to chase it to shut it off, and right now it was running over his fingers. The bottle of pills was empty on the floor next to him, what remained of them dissolved into white pond scum inside the toilet bowl. “Fuck.” He sighed. For an intangible specter, Lea had a way of making her will known beyond the grave.

Daniel was in his duty uniform and out the door a few minutes later. It was still dark, many other units were already out doing PT, but thankfully 1
st
VR had other orders and PT was shelved until further notice. Having not worn the gray and white “universal” camouflage before it was retired from service, Daniel felt very out of place and exposed in blue and white digital patterns. The green and brown uniform most recently fielded by a peacetime Army was now just another notch in the history books, and the Army keeps marching along.

Someone must have complained about the smell in the barracks, because this morning the chain smokers were outside in the frosty air, braving the cold for a warm puff of cancerous carcinogens. One of the sergeants offered the morning’s greeting to Daniel and it took a heartbeat for him to realize he was the one being saluted, and there was in fact no officer sneaking up behind him, except him. Returning the salute, Daniel went inside rather than keep freezing his fingers off and found the ‘head-shed,’ or office for officers. Major Sharp was already there, preparing the paperwork for incoming lieutenants. Some of them would end up outranking Daniel, but none of them had the political clout he could wield simply by blackmailing his mother, thus keeping him securely in Sharp’s favor. Aren’t family politics fun?

“Good morning, Sir.” Daniel greeted his meal ticket.

“Morning, Lieutenant. Got something for you.” Sharp slid a manila folder toward Daniel. “Go ahead and open it. Then meet me in the briefing room in ten, I’ll be going over today’s mission.” He patted Daniel on the shoulder and walked out.

“Yessir.” Daniel waited for Sharp to leave the room, then practically flung the envelope open. Inside were a dozen 8 ½”x11” color glossy photos of a satellite image of Clyde Sawyer’s home. There were as many different angles as there were frames, each showing the three doors and fifteen windows that made up a miraculously intact home. A date on the roof of the house, stenciled with whitewash, was a clear sign that his father had indeed survived at least a month into the time Daniel spent in the bush. Below that carefully marked date was another symbol, a three eyed smiley face from the movie
Evolution
. It wasn’t a really good movie, and certainly had nothing to do with their current situation, but the spoof of the infamous and very trademarked smiley face had a special meaning this time. Daniel had often used the three eyed smiley face because he thought it was funny, signing his name on pictures he drew as a child with the symbol or simply carving it into stuff he wasn’t supposed to. Annette wasn’t the kind of person, let alone parent, who’d notice a child’s special quirk, but Clyde was. This wasn’t just for rescue workers, this sign was for Daniel exclusively. If ever there was hope someone would see this sign, Clyde had made it one his son would know instantly, and exclusively.

The rest of the day went by in a series of blurs Daniel could not recall even a moment later, his mind was strictly on the fact that his father hadn’t been killed when the plague jumped the oceans. Whether or not he was still alive was a different story, and not one Daniel felt obliged to dwell on right now. He was happier for that day than he could ever remember having been, a great deal more about the world felt right to him now, a strong sense of being at peace was the key he never knew he was missing. For the first time in a long time, Daniel almost seemed genuinely happy.

Then evening came, and the crescendo of the mock battle and all its idiotic set-up scenarios for loading guns and dressing wounds was set up in front of an Army news team. They were actually conscripted film students and the like, none of whom wanted to do this propaganda piece, and it showed. One kid forgot to take the lens cover off his camera for the entire battle, but at least his audio was the best of the three. Later, in the After Action Review, Sharp and Daniel both agreed they really should have seen this coming:

Four Hours Earlier

Range 6, Warren AFB

Unencumbered by the heavy gear associated with the modern warfighter, such as ballistic vests and helmets, it was surprising how much faster a squad a troops could move. All they had to wear was the Army version of hockey gear to prevent bites and some gloves with rigid knuckles. One final addition was an insufferable gray pixel paintball mask designed to keep blood spatter out of your mouth. It was a good idea, Daniel had to admit he could see himself being a stickler for wearing this contraption into battle, but that didn’t mean he liked rebreathing his own breath. He needed to brush better.

The pointless traffic lights Sharp had installed in the control catwalk above the training ground blinked yellow. This was Daniel’s queue, “First Squad, Form the Line. Second Squad Prepare. Third Squad to the Rear Guard.” He said mechanically, not sure how far his voice would carry through the mask despite wearing built in radios. This was a far cry from the mythical Land Warrior system, an overly complicated legend of soon-to-come yet forever delayed technogarbage. But if the channel stayed clear and the zombies remained without tactics, just one voice over the radio could control the entire battlefield. Today, that voice was Daniel’s, and despite the distraction of knowing his father was still alive, he couldn’t be more excited to have the spotlight on him again.

OpFor, which stands for Opposing Force, began lurching forward in a prescribed manor that would as closely simulate real zombies as possible. Unfortunately for Sharp’s ego, the theater students playing the zombies were in fact just too damned close to the real thing. The front line bounded forward, took cover, aimed and waited for the command to fire. Finally the OpFor was close enough to practically throw rocks at, and Daniel radioed in for permission to engage and begin the battle. Receiving Sharp’s confirmation, and in as pontifical a voice as he could muster, Daniel said, “Weapons Red! Select your targets… Fire!”

The entire firing line erupted like a machine gun, though there were no actual belt-fed weapons in the platoon for the simple reason that machine guns were practically useless against zombies. The heavily padded faux Vics, of which there were almost fifty, began dropping like flies when the colored wax bullets smacked into them. Naturally, because there was a limited number of masks to protect the actors, those taken down in the first rank had to crawl or be dragged off camera and recycled into second and third waves. Then, rather than reload and let the second rank move forward to cover the first, the second squad practically leap-frogged over the first and crashed into the mock zombies with insane sounding battle cries. Daniel didn’t order this, and rushed to have the first rank hold fire.